Fish Soup - Paperback

by Margarita García Robayo (Author), Charlotte Coombe (Translator)

"...a gorgeous, blackly humorous look into the lives of Colombians struggling to find their place in society, both at home and abroad." --Publishers Weekly, starred reviewIn two novellas and seven short stories, Fish Soup blends cynicism and beauty with a rich vein of dark humour."Waiting for a Hurricane" follows a girl obsessed with escaping both her life and her country. Emotionally detached from her family, and disillusioned with what the future holds if she remains, she takes ever more drastic steps to achieve her goal, seemingly oblivious to the damage she is causing both herself and those around her. "Worse Things" offers snapshots of lives in turmoil, frayed relationships, family taboos, and rejection of and by society. And "Sexual Education" examines the attempts of a student to tally the strict doctrine of abstinence taught at her school with the very different moral norms that prevail in her social circles.At once blunt and poetic, Garcia Robayo delves into the lives of her characters, simultaneously evoking sympathy and revulsion, challenging the reader's loyalties throughout the remarkable universe that is Fish Soup .

Author Biography

Margarita García Robayo was born in 1980 in Cartagena, Colombia, and now lives in Buenos Aires where she teaches creative writing and works as a journalist and scriptwriter. She is the author of several novels, including Hasta que pase un huracán (Waiting for a Hurricane ) and Educación Sexual (Sexual Education, both included in Fish Soup ), Holiday Heart, and Lo que no aprendí (The Things I Have Not Learnt). She is also the author of a book of autobiographical essays Primera Persona (First Person ) and several collections of short stories, including Worse Things, which obtained the prestigious Casa de las Américas Prize in 2014 (also included in Fish Soup ). The Delivery is her third book to appear in English after the very successful Fish Soup (selected by the TLS as one of the best fiction titles of 2018) and Holiday Heart (Winner of the English PEN Award).

Charlotte Coombe is a British literary translator working from Spanish, French and Catalan into English. Shortlisted for the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize 2023 and winner of the Oran Robert Perry Burke Award 2022, she has translated more than a dozen works of fiction and nonfiction by authors including Anna Pazos, Rosa Ribas, Marvel Moreno, Antonio Díaz Oliva, Vincent Doumeizel, Frédéric Laffont, Eduardo Berti and Abnousse Shalmani. Her translations have been published in literary journals such as The White Review, The Southern Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Latin American Literature Today, Asymptote, Words Without Borders, and_World Literature Today_ . For Charco Press, she has translated three titles: Ricardo Romero's The President's Room (2017), Margarita García Robayo's Fish Soup (2018) (Shortlisted for the Valle Inclán Translation Prize in 2019) and Holiday Heart (2020).